Music Notes 2016: Maundy Thursday to Easter Eve. Maundy Thursday

Transcription

1 Music Notes 2016: Maundy Thursday to Easter Eve Maundy Thursday It is a part of the terrible beauty of the Maundy Thursday Solemn Eucharist that it brings the thrilling reappearance of the Gloria for the first time since before Ash Wednesday. Then, as the drama of the Last Supper unfolds and moves on to the Garden of Gethsemane, the atmosphere darkens and the music becomes ever more austere. Finally, the Blessed Sacrament rests in poignant solitary silence on the Lady Chapel altar for the one hour s Watch and then through the lonely night. There is a kind of stripping away in the process not just of the high altar s ornamentation until it is left bare, but also of the sound world we usually inhabit in church, and this is stressed afresh when we come together on Good Friday with the organ firmly switched off and strictly a capella music for the Solemn Liturgy, after which the church is left utterly empty, even of the Blessed Sacrament. The Kyrie and Gloria on Maundy Thursday must therefore grab our attention dramatically, and few do this as successfully as those of the Messe cum jubilo written in 1966 by the French composer Maurice Duruflé ( ). Our own services are suffused with plainchant indeed, the remainder of the Sung Eucharist after the Gloria is largely sung to chant. Duruflé, the highly dedicated organist of St-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris from 1929 to the end of his life, so absorbed chant into his own music that some of his works amount in effect to highly coloured accompaniments of pre-existing chants, although often extended, mutated, transposed and otherwise processed. The Messe cum jubilo is written for a chorus of baritones with a baritone soloist who must be capable of very demanding top notes. These are not there just to make life difficult for the soloist: the highest of them comes where the text pleads for mercy in the light of our sins, the high pitch giving an extra layer of audible tension and anxiety to the prayer. This exuberant setting is among the most exciting pieces of music in the entire year. The extraordinary thing is that this is accomplished with just a single vocal line and organ accompaniment their very simplicity somehow making the music s dramatic flourish all the more powerful. The next time we hear the Gloria will be when we start our Easter celebrations on the evening of Holy Saturday a short period in chronological time, but with a huge liturgical journey in between. During the service, the celebrant ceremonially washes the feet of members of the Sanctuary team and the congregation, repeating Jesus s own actions with his disciples in St John s account of the Last Supper. In John s Gospel, there is in fact no account of the institution of the Eucharist: the foot washing is the main thing that happens, apart from an enormous amount of very important teaching and Judas practically being sent off to complete his betrayal. So, we can assume the washing was seen by St John as extremely important, indeed, one of the most important things about that evening. Jesus sums up the point of this action as follows: If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. Of course, this action is done for us by our priest and it is easy for us to think that the priest s

2 job is to serve his or her people, metaphorically as well as literally washing their feet. But St John s account doesn t let us off so easily: ye ought to wash one another's feet. A priest is not just there for his or her people: the people are also there for their priest, whose metaphorical feet they too should be taking care of. This is emphasized in the chant that concludes the foot washing rite, Ubi Caritas, which we hear this year in a setting by the Norwegian composer, Ola Gjeilo (b. 1978): Where charity and love are, God is there. Christ's love has gathered us into one. Let us rejoice and be pleased in Him. Let us fear, and let us love the living God. And may we love each other with a sincere heart. Where charity and love are, God is there. This is a work that Gjeilo has returned to more than once. Based around the historic plainchant for these words, and originally written for a normal SATB choir, he has also provided it as SSAA and TTBB, and it is the dark timbres of the latter lower-voice version that we will hear this evening. Good Friday Good Friday is obviously a day with a very sombre aesthetic. Despite this, or perhaps equally because of this, it has inspired composers to write music of the very greatest beauty and passion. In the course of the Solemn Liturgy at noon, we will hear the second of the settings by Tomás Luis de Victoria ( ) of the Passion narrative, this time according to the text of St John s Gospel. As with last Sunday s setting, the story is narrated by a singer known as the Evangelist, while individual and collective character parts are played by soloists and choir. The Reproaches or Improperia date from the ninth century and had started to be used more or less throughout Europe by about the time that the Priory Church was founded 893 years ago. Even so, they may well not have been in use within our walls until a couple of hundred years thereafter, when their inclusion in the Liturgy of Good Friday was formalized by Rome. We have always heard them over the past twenty years in a setting derived in part from music by Victoria. However, this year Rupert has chosen the wonderful setting produced in 1984 by the British organist and composer, John Sanders ( ). His first job after university and the Royal College of Music was as Assistant Organist at Gloucester Cathedral, from where he went to be organist of Chester Cathedral in In 1967, however, he was called back to Gloucester, this time as Director of Music. When the cathedral introduced a revised Good Friday liturgy in 1984, he composed this wonderful setting of the Reproaches, taking as his structural inspiration the Miserere by Allegri, with its alternating sections of polyphony and plainchant, although the resemblance ends there. Nevertheless, the fact that Lent began on Ash Wednesday for us with the Miserere, and that it somewhat imbues this setting of the Reproaches, is a neat piece of bookending. The text is construed as reproaches addressed by the crucified Jesus to his people: What have I done to you? How have I offended you? Between the verses, we hear the Trisagion, a hymn of praise that tradition dates from Constantinople in the fifth century. Holy God, Holy

3 Strong, Holy Immortal, Have mercy on us! In those days, the Christian Church could still be regarded as largely being in one piece and this text spread across it, being adapted into various local liturgies. It continues to play an important role in the regular liturgy of the Orthodox Church and many other parts of the Eastern Church. In the western Church, it has come to be associated primarily with this moment on Good Friday. At this moment in the service, when we personally come to the foot of the Cross, faction seems to break down, as we hear this distinctive refrain that is shared by eastern and western Christianity. This is followed by one of the most enduring pieces of Good Friday music: Crux fidelis, set by King John IV of Portugal ( ). It seems rather extraordinary that this wonderfully devotional piece came from his royal pen, because his political life was full of turmoil and drama just by coming to the throne he precipitated a twenty-eight-year war with Spain However, King John (more correctly: João) was also a person of great culture, especially in the field of music, writing important works about the subject, befriending many composers, and building a wonderful library of music that was, alas, later destroyed in the course of the Lisbon earthquake in The text of Crux fidelis is the eighth verse of the hymn known as Pange lingua (Sing my tongue the glorious battle). It was most probably intended to be sung as a Responsory at the end of every plainchant verse of the hymn, but nowadays is usually just performed as a stand-alone piece. We think naturally of Anton Bruckner ( ) as a symphonist with a vast body of substantial work to prove it. He was also a man of passionate Catholic faith, writing some thirty motets of great emotion and depth, and working as a church organist for a significant part of his life, during which his skill as an improviser attracted much attention. Christus factus est is from a set of four motets that were published together. Starting simply and quietly, it builds to a passionate climax before subsiding again to a peaceful conclusion. The text is from the Epistle to the Philippians: Christ became obedient for us, even unto death, death upon the cross. Because of this, God raised him and bestowed on him the name which is above all names. The structure of Tenebræ on the evening of Good Friday was created through the melding of the cathedral offices of Matins and Lauds and used exclusively during the last three days of Holy Week. Allegri s Miserere, which we heard on Ash Wednesday, is an example of a piece that was composed expressly for Tenebræ, in that case for use in the Sistine Chapel, where the service began at 3am (Incidentally, I am grateful to the Rector for drawing a distinction in this context between the cathedral offices and the monastic offices. Although these two approaches converged later, the early monastics were really very austere and minimalist in their approach to liturgy, eschewing the ritual and music of the cathedral by which is simply meant the public church that was the seat of the Bishop. The components of Tenebræ that concern us here came originally from the comparatively elaborate cathedral tradition.) The music we use in this service is a combination of plainchant and wonderful settings of the Responsories by Victoria, and culminates in a further performance of Bruckner s Christus factus est. Tenebræ completes our journey through a significant part of

4 Victoria s substantial body of music for Passiontide, from which comes part of the music for Palm Sunday and both Passion narratives heard this week. We will meet him again on Easter Eve in a very different mood, but for the time being, it is worth reflecting on how strongly he has influenced the experience of Passiontide from the late sixteenth century to this day. Although by no means a long service, Tenebræ is extraordinarily atmospheric, partly through beautiful music sung in the Priory Church s awe-inspiring architecture as the light leaves the sky, but also because the fifteen lit candles at the east end of the church with which the service begins are gradually extinguished until the last one is carried out of sight behind the High Altar. If the American composer John Cage was correct that all sound is music, what happens next as everyone (this moment is not restricted to the choir, clergy and servers, but can and should be entered into by all) starts to bang books or whatever against the nearest resonant surface, seems to me to qualify for this description. It is known as the Strepitus, which means Great Noise and has been interpreted by commentators as indicating a protest against the darkness and a demand for the return of the light (looking forward hopefully to the Resurrection), or as an allusion to the earthquake that the Gospels report as following the death of Christ on the Cross or considerably more prosaically as originating in the Master of Ceremonies just using a sound signal in the darkness to indicate that the clergy should now return to the sacristy. Whatever the origin, this final moment of vigorous sound, the last thing that we do in church before the First Fire of Easter, and which is indeed rewarded with the reappearance of the fifteenth candle, does seem like a timeless and somehow very fundamentally human moment. In its crude hammering for attention, it is like a baby that cries out wordlessly to express its need for comfort, food, or whatever. For all its primitive nature, this sound piece expresses the same longing that all the Passion music of Victoria and the other composers we will have heard in this season intended to express: our fundamental need and desire for the Grace of God in Salvation. Easter Eve The Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday marks the beginning of Easter. In some churches, it is immediately followed by the First Mass of Easter, even though it is still Saturday evening. One might be surprised by this, unclear how, if Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, we could possibly celebrate Easter as soon as the following evening. This is because the Church inherited from its Jewish roots the understanding that the day begins at sundown. This is, indeed, part of the story of Good Friday: the authorities are anxious that all those executed on crosses should be dead and down before the start of the Sabbath, which began at sundown on Good Friday. Jesus said he would rise on the third day. The first day is therefore Good Friday, the second is Holy Saturday, beginning at sundown on the Friday evening, and the third day is Easter Day, beginning at sundown on the Saturday, and known as Easter Eve, just as Christmas Eve is the evening before Christmas Day. The biblical account is not specific about when on the third day the actual resurrection (as

5 opposed to its discovery) occurred, and some churches therefore undertake a full celebration of Easter on the Saturday evening. Our practice is a little different: we meet in the Cloister for the First Fire of Easter, the kindling of the New Light, we proclaim the Resurrection, listen to the story of salvation in a sequence of readings, prayers and music, and then hear a dramatic Te Deum of praise to God, who has achieved all this for us and our salvation, during which key parts of the church are censed and then we go home and come back to do the First Mass of Easter in the daylight. The music of the Easter Vigil also emerges out of the darkness. Beginning with the Deacon s three stark cries of The Light of Christ into a building illuminated initially only by the paschal candle he or she carries, and the people s response, Thanks be to God, we move to the lectern, where the Exsultet is proclaimed in chant by the Deacon into the huge space, amid flickering candlelight that still fails to penetrate the darker corners of our extraordinary building. Then scores of other candles throughout the building are brought to life and the first Gloria of Easter, absent throughout Lent apart from being heard once at the Maundy Thursday Solemn Eucharist, bursts from the choir and organ as the whole space seems to come to life. Lit now almost entirely by candles, the church looks the way it will have appeared at this time for the first 750 or so years after its foundation. The music for the Gloria is from the Messe Solennelle by the French composer, Louis Vierne ( ). Now, this is more bookending, because this is the setting that Rupert used for us on the very first Sunday of Lent. Of course, in that service there was expressly no Gloria at all, so it is especially neat that we mark the moment at which the proclamation of Easter has been made by bursting into this dramatic setting that has waited these past forty days and forty nights to complete the performance of this wonderful work. In previous years, the first of the pieces that intersperse the readings has been the setting by Herbert Howells of Like as the hart. This year, we instead hear the setting of the same text (but in Latin), Sicut cervus, by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina ( ). The words are from Psalm 42: Like as the hart desireth the waterbrook, so longeth my soul after thee, O God. In Palestrina s day, these words would have been sung on the way to the font for the renewal of the baptismal waters and the paschal baptism of any available candidates. This setting is in fact just the first part of a longer piece that is often now sung as two separate pieces, the second being Sitivit anima mea (my soul is athirst for God). Sicut cervus is its composer s bestknown motet and an elegantly wonderful example of his most developed style. Peter Phillips, Founder and Director of the Tallis Scholars who have performed so much of Palestrina s output writing in the Musical Times in 1994, drew attention to the way that Palestrina s music, for all its serene and balanced elegance, is nevertheless thoroughly imbued with joy. He observed that most composers get more mileage out of an anguished musical vocabulary, and yet Palestrina without trivializing his response to serious matters in any way manages to radiate a genuine joy in life, in God, and in the liturgy. Of course,

6 it is easier to feel this with performances that do not make him sound austere, remote and chilly. Sicut cervus is a good example of exactly what Peter Phillips meant. Victimæ paschali laudes is one of only four medieval sequences that survived a series of musical revisions decided upon by the Council of Trent. The authorship of the text is usually attributed to Wipo of Burgundy. Christians, offer your thankful praises to the paschal victim, it begins. In prior years, we have usually heard a setting of this by Victoria, but this year, Rupert has instead chosen a setting by Orlando di Lasso ( ), Victoria s contemporary. Settings of this sequence in the period were usually written as alternatim settings that is, sections of the plainchant alternate with polyphonic choral sections and this is no exception. Lassus actually gives us slightly less plainchant than Victoria, and sets rather more of the text for the full choir. His is also a more traditionally polyphonic setting based around the outline of the plainchant melody for the start of each section, while Victoria almost turns parts of his setting into a kind of dance of joy at the good news of the Resurrection. But as always with Lassus, his approach is measured, elegant, and marvellously well-crafted, and one might almost quip that, if Victoria feels the Resurrection more, Lassus understands it, and deploys all his technical skill to bring it to life for us. This year, we will be finishing with the Festival Te Deum by Benjamin Britten ( ). This, one of his very best small-scale sacred works, was written in 1944 for the centenary of St Mark s Church in Swindon, where it so happens that the author of these notes used to be Director of Music. St Mark s, a real Anglo-Catholic basilica in its own mind if not in its structure, was known as the Railway Church, because it had been built at the request of the Great Western Railway Company and its people based in the community of Swindon New Town, at the foot of the hill on which was perched Swindon Old Town, and was completed and dedicated in At the time he was working on the composition, Britten s only other focus was on writing his first proper opera, Peter Grimes while living in the United States previously, he and Wystan Auden had written Paul Bunyan, but this did not achieve its final form until near the end of Britten s life. After Britten had completed the score of the Te Deum, he sent it to Swindon, where it was received with dismay by the combined choirs of Swindon New Town. The Parish had two daughter churches (as they were known), St Luke s (quite a nice church, but lopsided, since the south aisle was never built) and St Saviour s (a kind of Nissan hut up in Swindon Old Town). The choirs of both were to join in with the choir of St Mark s, and the feeling of horror at what they were being asked to sing was universal. When I started there, a number of the old choristers were still around, and they were able after all the years to remember vividly how they all hated the piece. Britten attended the final rehearsal, and was horrified by what he heard. The piece was performed once, and the copies put away firmly from most singers point of view, hopefully for ever. Some years later, the parish was put in the hands of a modern Anglo- Catholic priest, who decided to clear out the choir library with a big bonfire in the churchyard. Into the flames went the autographed copies of the Te Deum It took until 1986, at a concert of music in memoriam Benjamin Britten 10 years after his death with new copies, of course for the piece to be sung in St Mark s a second time.

7 Of course, in the meantime, so much of our perceptions have changed. Diggory, a choirboy at the first performance, attended the second performance, now as a retiree, and was astonished at how uncomplicated the piece now seemed, how tuneful, warm and even romantic in places. It is a thrilling work, with a remarkable cleverly flexible opening section that defies pinning down to a particular rhythmic structure, then a vivid, exciting middle section, before returning to a more reflective character near the end. It is exactly what the name suggests: a Festival Te Deum, and, unless you want to make a pitch for Christmas (which I do), there aren t any greater Festivals than Easter.